Lost Children
by Aldrean Treu Peri
Summary: A look at life in the Potter household over the years... from the viewpoint of James's parents...


**_Lost Children_**

* * *

"Don't run so fast, James! You'll slip and fall..." Rhian sighed, exasperated, "and it'll all end in tears."

"Phantoms on the winter sky, together they do come; faded lips and eyes of blue they're carried in the wind; their laughter filled the countryside but they'll not laugh again..." James sang above the warnings of his mother.

"Oh, you little devil!" Ewan called, reaching down to sweep his five years old son into his arms. James shrieked with laughter and squirmed, his eyes bright and shining, his hair a rumpled black mess. "Didn't your mother tell you not to run, James? You're always in such a hurry...you'd best be careful, reckless things could get you killed."

"Ewan!" Rhian's voice was sharp. "Don't be so morbid! You'll frighten the child!"

But James kept on laughter, writhing in his father's arms, and when he was released simply dashed off again. Ewan gazed after his only child, pride evident in his azure eyes, and reached out to capture Rhian's hand, stilling her needlework.

A puzzled frown creased her brown and Rhian opened her mouth to question her husband, but Ewan merely shook his head and sat down heavily. Silent they sat, listening to the peals of childlike laughter filling the small house and the hurried footfalls that told the young couple their child was racing about still.

Ewan stroked Rhian's hand lightly, his dark hair - a legacy passed on to their son - straight and soft and falling in wisps before his eyes. "Rhian, beloved, there is trouble on the horizon. I am thankful we saw precious little of war in our years, but I fear James's days will be dark indeed when he is of our age. Something is happening, something wicked breeding and growing. Shadows lurk in daylight, clinging to buildings I fear to enter, and there is darkness in the eyes of men."

"But...what? I don't understand. What's happening? War? With whom? I had thought we were safe...for years we've been safe!"

"No, beloved, war amongst ourselves. Our world is still shielded from the eyes of those who cannot understand nor accept." Ewan exhaled loudly, brushing a lock of Rhian's wild russet hair behind the curved shell of her right ear. Her hazel eyes were worried and Ewan felt his heart twist within his chest at being the bearer of ill tidings.

"The Ministry would not let war erupt. What is going on that I have missed tending to our child? He will be beginning primary school this autumn, will he be safe?"

"Do not fear, Rhian, things are happening slowly. There is a man speaking against those of poor blood, those some feel should not be a part of our society. He is attempting to bring people to his side, telling tales of atrocities performed by the ungifted to our kind. He croons into the ears of those easily swayed, promises a world free of restrictions and where power and pure blood is all. He is a powerful man, Rhian, but power is dangerous...the more you have the more you need and you draw deeper, strive harder, and sacrifice what cannot be afforded to give."

"There have always been pureblooded extremists though, how is this any different?"

Ewan looked troubled and unsure. "This man has the drive, the seductive allure. When he speaks, his voice is slick and chilly and beckoning, it makes people want to please him. Powerful people in our world today would bend a knee to kiss the hem of his cloak. Perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but even the most assured and arrogant will crumble before him. He is a devious man and knows how to play individuals, but for all that I call him a man he is scarcely more than a boy. He is just this summer graduated of school."

"You speak as though you know him, Ewan. You speak as though you've met and conversed with this man." Rhian was afraid of this man her husband spoke of.

"I have, Rhian. I knew his mother, may her soul be at rest and her spirit unable to see what her son has become. I knew the boy when he was only that, a boy. He was formidable then, but untrained and such an accomplished little actor! He played upon the sympathies of adults and outshone his fellow students in academics, but he was always drawn to the darkness that lurked in his soul. His was not an easy life, dearest, his father left his mother and she died and the boy grew to be eleven in an orphanage where he was never understood.

"I am distantly related to the boy, my great-granduncle was connected in some way to his family, so I have taken an interest in his well-being. Besides, my job brought me often enough to the school."

"Has he, this man-child, a name?" Rhian questioned, pulling her hand away as she rose to check on James, who had been uncharacteristically silent a few rooms away.

"I am no longer sure what he is called. There was a time when his name was Tom."

* * *

Father and son stood against the strong easternly wind, weeds and reeds whipping at their legs protected by dark slacks, their hands tucked into their pockets. James's hair was a mess as usual and for once Ewan's hair looked much the same, harassed by the cold early winter wind. Snow lay in heaps and piles, not yet covering all of the ground, but what was not white and frozen bore stained shades of death, leaves and the weeds and reeds and all.

"I know your teachers are brilliant, James. I know that you are taught well and I know that you are a smart boy, if sometimes too rash. Your mother was displeased by the letters we received. Troubling other students? Sneaking around the school after hours? And your teachers are all very impressed by your ingenuity, honestly, but they would dearly appreciate it if you paid attention in class instead of disrupting order."

"You honestly can't expect me to behave in History..." James began, looking incredulous.

Ewan pursed his lips thoughtfully, drudging up his memory of the teacher and what a bore the class was. "All right, I suppose I can concede that, but it is very important for you to know the history of our world! Every day we're making more of it. Someday the actions you do could change the fate of the world and then children will be reading about that instead of wars long since over." James's father looked bothered, as he often did of late. "I know you think I'm just getting paranoid in my old age, but believe me when I say that dark times are approaching. In school, you and your fellow students are sheltered. You do not see what is happening in the real world. The trouble that is coming, it has been a long time fermenting."

James scowled and ran a hand through his hair, mussing it further. "We're not kept ignorant in the dark, father." His eyes swept over the field they stood on the edge of and the marsh a few scant feet from their position, years of studying battles and strategy making his mind map out a possible plan of action in case of a skirmish. He shook his head to clear it and smiled grimly at his father. "We know that we're on the brink of war. We know that we've got two basic choices: be the good guys or be the bad guys. We've got all of our teachers and our parents and the newspapers trying to influence us one way or the other and none of us has any idea of which side is the right and which is the wrong."

"Life is tough, James. There are a lot of decisions we've all got to make and no one ever really knows beforehand which is the right path to take." Ewan closed his eyes briefly and James worried at how tired his father seemed to be. "All right. Show me what you've been learning and maybe I can help a bit. When the time comes to decide, I hope you'll choose correctly. Either way, I'll make sure you're strong enough to survive."

* * *

James laughed, smiling broadly at his mother as she spooned more potatoes onto his plate. His eyes had not changed from his youth, still sparkling with mischief, and his laugh sounded as carefree and genuine as always. He had not experienced much in life, not yet, and Rhian prayed devoutly that her son would be spared the hardest lessons life had to teach. She watched her husband quietly dig into the meal and sipped at her wine, a comfortable quiet settling over the dinner table for a time before she spoke.

"We miss your friend, James. Are you sure he wanted to stay at the school this holiday? We haven't minded putting him up in the house, an extra body is no trouble at all, even the way you growing boys eat. Will he be coming by to visit at all?"

James swallowed a bite of meat before replying. "Yeah, I'm sure that dog will be around eventually. Around Christmas maybe, or the New Year. It's our final year and they've heaped on the work, practical and written. Besides, he's not alone this holiday." A cocky grin spread across James's face. "Ladies just love him, and men too, poor boy."

Rhian shook her head slightly, smiling. "And what of you, my boy? I thought you were going to bring your lady-friend here this year. Did the dear choose to drown under schoolwork as well?"

"Oh, she'll be here as well, mum. Lil has got her own family to cater to for a time, though I can't fathom why she'd miss her sister. Horse-face and I don't get along very well."

Ewan looked distinctly tempted to laugh, but Rhian was obviously upset. "I should say so! Not if you address her so! Honestly, James, how can you possibly woo this girl if you don't at least pretend to like her family? What's so bad about the sister?"

James's lips pressed into a thin line. "She doesn't approve of what Lil is. She doesn't like it, doesn't want to understand it. Her parents couldn't be happier for her but not her sister. It hurt her, I think, more than she lets on. Lil used to be close to her sister. Ever since she went off to school though..." He trailed off.

"Oh dear, yes, I'd heard of this rift dividing families before. It's simply tragic and I wish there was something to be done for it."

"If you listen to the slander that pompous git spouts you'd have one solution." James looked as though he wanted to spit on the floor. "Down that road lies ruin, I reckon. Don't think I'm apt to take that path, da. There's a girl I love that I would have to deny and she's too beautiful, smart, and perfect for me to do that." Just as quickly as the dark expression had come onto James's face it was gone.

Ewan, appearing proud and relieved at James's pronouncement, carefully steered the conversation into safer waters and his parents listened tolerantly as James regaled them with stories of the girl he loved.

* * *

Rhian stormed into the house, tears streaking her rosy cheeks and her russet hair spilling untamed down her back, snowflakes glistening amongst the curls and waves. She took a heaving breath, gave a shuddering sigh, and collapsed with a wail onto the stool beside the kitchen table.

Ewan, who had been looking over tactics and plans in the study, organizing attacks and counter-attacks to offer to the Order at the next meeting, followed the miserable sounds into the kitchen. Rhian blinked at him with large wet doe-eyes and flew into his surprised arms, nearly choking with the force of her sobs.

"Oh, Ewan! I can't stand it! This war will be the death of me, or him, or all of us!"

"Rhian, beloved, breathe. You're going into hysterics, calm down, just breathe and you can tell me what's the matter once you've settled down. Please, dearest, I can't stand when you're upset, it worries me so."

Rhian clutched at her husband with fear-born desperation. "He was just so young, playing with toy trains and little wooden soldiers...I never wanted him to become a soldier! No mother wants to see their son enter a war!" She gasped and buried her face in Ewan's robes for a time, gathering strength to continue and gulping back fresh tears. "We went into town today to get him fitted for his uniforms. Uniforms! Not much difference from his school clothes, far as I can tell, but the intent! Oh, we should have stopped him, made him take other courses. We're going to loose our son, Ewan!"

"Shh, hush now, Rhian. No one is lost, no one is going to be lost."

Rhian rested quietly in her husband's embrace for a moment, fury gathering in her heart that threatened to release itself as a scream. She fought free of her husband's arms and glared at him, eyes snapping with fire, her face flushed and splotchy from crying, and her cheeks itching from the salty tears not wiped away.

"No one is going to be lost?! Ewan, you fool! This is war! We are at war! War is nothing, _nothing_, but loss! If not my son, my only child, then someone else's boy or girl, someone else's husband or niece or mother. Families are ripped to pieces in wars, siblings choose different sides, children barely grown are stuffed into training camps and saturated with knowledge they'll need to survive, but they can't begin to comprehend everything! It's all forced down their throats like medicine, but it's poison!

"I saw my only child geared up this afternoon in colors that will not show blood. I saw our little boy, our little James, graduate from courses where he was taught to defend himself and others, taught to kill if necessary...I don't want to outlive my son!"

Ewan stood rigid-backed and silent, allowing his wife's words to sink into his awareness. His heart tightened painfully. "I am sorry, Rhian. War _is_ loss. War is pain and death and suffering and sometimes, in desperate times, the only course of action. There is a tumor infecting our world, a dangerous man drunk on power gathering men and women to use as cannon fodder against our boys and girls. If we do not fight him now, we will loose. It will not be only our lives lost, not just the lives of those who choose to fight as our son has. His fiancee would be a target. Her family would be a target. Her naive childhood friends, totally unaware of what we are, they would be a target. Something must be done to stop the killing before it becomes a massacre."

Rhian dropped soundlessly to the ground, her knees trembling and weak and unable to support her body. Her husband knelt down beside her, drawing her into his arms again.

"James is an adult. He will be marrying that wondrous girl we've spent hours hearing about and days getting to know when she visited. They will have a family someday if luck is with them. He has made his own choices and we cannot stand against him."

"Ewan...you conditioned him to be a warrior. Since he was young and we first became aware of the troubles brewing, you made sure our son would be a fighter. You have always pushed him to do his best, and he has always done even better than that. He's a soldier, bred to fight, and all I've given him is a conscience that will make him hesitate when it could mean his life."

"Our son is very intelligent, Rhian. He will not die easily if at all in this war. Lily would not allow it, she intends to marry him and live together for many years. James was not trained to be a warrior, he was taught all aspects of life. His nature lead him to seek battle skills rather than medical training or something less dangerous. You know him, Rhian. James has ever been a rule-breaker, seeking thrills and a way to prove himself. I have always been proud of his accomplishments, no less than you, and it is not my failing or yours or his that has lead to this day."

Rhian whimpered. "I'm sorry, Ewan. I just...I don't want my baby to die. And war kills, Ewan, whatever else it accomplishes...war kills."

* * *

The sky was a blaze of crimson and maroon on the first of November. Gay shouts and laughter filled the air of the early hours, celebrations spilling out into the streets as windows once barred for fear were flung wide. Ale flowed freely and survivors wined, dined, danced, and cried out their thanks to the bloody sunrise.

Rhian's thoughts were filled with a serpent's smile that could have been the devil's own, and flames flickering in cold eyes that shone brutally like the blade of a knife. Those who had lost were grateful that the war was over, but their tears were bitter and their faces partially despair, partially relief. Lines of refugees filled the sidewalk outside the Ministry, tortured souls seeking solace and sanctuary, and Rhian walked past without really seeing them at all.

It was over. It had to be. Too much had been given up.

Her throat was scratchy and sore, her eyes red-rimmed and squinted against the pale, awful red of the sunrise. Her hands trembled at her side, her heart empty. The gray-bearded and powerful man into whose hands she had entrusted the lives of her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson had seemed very vulnerable when she had gone to see him. She had not yelled, could not after sobbing and screeching herself breathless and hoarse in the terribly dark hours before dawn. Still, her quiet words seemed to have scarred the ancient man, the man of whom so much was asked and demanded...who could survive under such a burden? Who could retain the ability to truly care?

She was in her house, standing in her son's room. She stared unseeing at his bed, carefully made, and the trinkets and treasures that made up his life. It was cold in there without him, an ache longing to be filled, but she was not the person to fill that void.

Shivers traced down her spine, tears slipped silently down her gaunt cheeks. It was logical, she supposed. Mired in grief as she was, miserable with sorrow, the house was no place for an infant boy. What she had heard of her daughter-in-law's family though, or at least of the sister to whom the boy had been sent, was not reassuring. She wanted that boy, that piece of her dead child and the woman he had loved.

Ewan stubbornly clung to denial, denial that the war was even over because without the loss of their boy it may not have been. He spent days locked in his study, poring over maps and tomes, searching for the perfect solution that would have ended things without James's death. Rhian felt the loss of her husband like a sore, raw and constantly burnt by the salt of her tears. He was in the house, just a few rooms away, but beyond her reach all the same.

She remembered sitting in the rocking chair when her son's room had been his nursery, lulling the boy to sleep with the gentle motion of the chair and her own soft voice filled with awe at the life she cradled in her arms. She remembered kneeling beside his bed when he was a young boy and fevered, thrashing about on sweat-soaked sheets and moaning low, the whispered reassurance of her words meaningless compared to the power of her voice as she sang to him to release him from the nightmares of sickness.

Rhian lay down on her son's bed, on top of the cool sheets with the thin comforter kicked off onto the floor just the way he always slept. She tucked her hands up by her face, curled her body into the fetal position, and closed her eyes against the incessant tears that continued to stream down her face. Broken and hitched, her voice pushed past clammy lips to sound in the weighty silence that ought to have been filled with the laughter of a child and the sound of running. Half-sobbing, Rhian sang a lullaby to ease her into sleep.


End file.
